thirteen moons make a year

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black and white silk waited for me

turn the year, turn, turn

feathers mark my path

this one tells that

thirteen moons make a year

last year, next year and now

not so different after all

look what happened in a day!

turn the year, turn, turn

I never told you that I embroider a little.  I don’t quilt, but since learning the basics of mending, I am tempted to patch together bits of aged and abused cloth into works of rough and rustic beauty. Japanese boro patchwork and sakiori weaving excite me. 

I have been following Jude Hill’s blog, Spirit Cloth, for a few months. She patches and embroiders in ways that I can only dream of doing. Maybe I am dreaming, but I want to combine my textiles in magical ways. I can create my inner vision on paper, and have always dreamed of doing it with cloth. This is the first step.

Best of all, I’m not keeping this square.  It’s for the Magic Feather project, a collection of embroidered feathers that will come together in a project to benefit children. 

Even better is that I am taking a e-workshop with Jude Hill.  Cloth to Cloth.  Weaving with fabric.

 

a long time coming

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In the morning, the fog recedes, revealing the distant hills in shades of green, gray and soft purple. This is the place I call home.

It has been a long journey, over a year from inspiration…gathering the yarn…spinning some of it myself…warping the loom and weaving, weaving, weaving…getting past the trepidation of making the first cut in the fabric…painstakingly sewing each seam by hand…and now it is done.

I have woven a year of my life into this coat, joys and sorrow, change and awakening, even the seeds of revolution. When I wear this coat, I am fully wrapped in all these memories, especially of the mountains that wait for me at home.

 

Back to basics

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This year’s visit to the NY Sheep and Wool festival was a return to the basics.  Years ago, before online communities like Ravelry created such a whirl of anticipation before the event, the NYS&W was just my annual shopping trip for spinning and weaving.

My shopping list was very short this year. I have not kept up on spinning the fiber I bought the past two years, so I decided to pretend that all my unspun fiber was new and exciting and not buy any more.

  • Pewter buttons for a knitted shrug
  • A Kathryn Alexander knitting project
  • Something new and different

And that’s exactly what I bought.

Spiral pewter buttons from the Rams Horn

                      

The Doo Dad Scarf from Kathryn Alexander

Micro Kate from Golding Fiber Tools. Isn’t that new and different?  It’s a lazy kate for plying spindle spun yarns.

I also bought some Harmony Wood double pointed needles as an extra little treat. They are not artisan made like the products above, so I’ll just mention them and move on.

Yes, I am still weaving the Misted Hills Coat. I wove the better part of a yard today, and maybe, just maybe, I might finish the weaving this week.

I have also been spinning all that wonderful fiber from years past, starting with these Loop Spontaneous Spinning Clouds that I spun yesterday.

An inch here, another there

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The Misted Hills coat fabric is growing slowly, an inch here, another there. I know the reality of my days.  In winter, the long and cold nights do not inspire me to weave. They leave me completely uninspired. Spring finds me outside, enjoying the mild weather.  Summer and autumn are my best times for weaving. Weaving isn’t hot and sticky like knitting. All I touch is the smooth wooden shuttle. Maybe my fingertips brush gently across the cloth. My loom is an open and airy frame, a good refuge from summer’s heat.

It’s cool and rainy today, another reason to spend time at my loom.  I’ve declared, today is a weaving retreat.

I want to finish this fabric, because my inspiration basket is filling up with yarn for a project that’s still very formless in my mind.

All I know is that the yarn looks like this, the warp may be black, and the fabric is called Dreaming Myself Awake.

 

Fiber Festival in review

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OK, don’t ask how I got so sidetracked yesterday. I underestimated how long it takes to add pictures and links to a blog entry. Let’s get back to my experiences at the Fiber Festival of New England. As much as I enjoyed the NY Sheep and Wool festival last month, I wanted to spend more time among creative people.  I assure you I didn’t need any more batts to spin, but I wanted some. I have fallen in love with the spontaneous fibery goodness from Steph Gorin of Loop. Remember those Baby Cakes that I bought at Rhinebeck?  I’m nearly done spinning them and I still wanted more Loop-iness.

So, plans were made and I awakened in the pre-dawn hours to converge upon the festival with two friends.  There are only two things that will get me out of bed before dawn: a good hike or a fiber festival. We misplaced one friend for a few hours due to problems with Amtrak’s ticket machines on her end. I can’t believe that she had to miss the train because their ticket machines wouldn’t work.

This is the Mallery Complex at the Eastern States Exposition grounds.  It’s a spiffy fairgrounds, but it’s located in a very industrial part of Springfield, MA.  I suppose the town grew up around the fairgrounds, whose oldest parts date to 1916.

The taxi dropped us off right here, but there was parking right nearby for those who drove to the festival.

Once inside, we were greeted by sheep and alpacas in tidy pens, and lots of booths featuring alpaca yarn and fiber. Alpaca are soft but hairy beasts. It’s not my favorite fiber to spin and weave. Getting all the hair out seems impossible.

There was a small fleece sale in the same room, but I resisted the urge to buy a whole, unprocessed fleece.  As one of my friends remarked, “It has poo in it!” Some of the fleece did have manure tags in them. I don’t have the facility to process a fleece in my studio, and I am reluctant to send it out for commercial processing, which seems to make even the softest wool harsh. With some regret, I had to leave the fleeces for others to enjoy.

There was also a demonstration of shearing. I am always in awe of the skill of shearers, who can hold the sheep still and take off the coat in one unbroken fleece.

These sheep are waiting their turn at shearing. Baa!

On to the main vendor room. It was good to be indoors on a cool day, but it was also good to have a view of the sky through the skylights of the building. It was bright and enough of a modern barn that it didn’t feel isolated from nature. I do prefer the picturesque and rustic setting of the NY Sheep and wool festival buildings, but this was acceptable.  At least it wasn’t urban, stuffy and unpleasant like the Stitches East marketplace.

I had to laugh at the sign that read, “No livestock in the main aisle.”

There were plenty of festival goers in the main aisle and in all the side aisles. It wasn’t insanely crowded, but there were lots of people enjoying the festival.

I didn’t see many people wearing handwoven and hand knit garments. I guess there were a lot of first-timers who didn’t know that wearing and commenting on beautiful handcrafted clothing is a huge part of the fun. I wore the Misted Hills scarf, and answered a few questions about hand-weaving. I’m very comfortable wearing my own designs. Over the years, I have developed a personal style that moves in it’s own direction, regardless of the fashion industry. Scarves area a big part of my style, all year round.

There was yarn, there was fiber, there were supplies for making felt. There were bobbin lace demos, rug hooking demos, rug twining demos, a few weavers, and a few spinners. Hats, beads, knitting needles and dyes. It was a good selection of New England’s best.

This is what I bought:

  • Spontaneous Spinning Clouds from Loop, in Eggplant, Three Ring Circus, and The Devil Made Me Do It. I love her color names. These clouds are well named, because they are feather light blends of several breeds of wool, mohair, angelina, and noils.
  • An Ed Jenkins Turkish Delight spindle, in Tulipwood. That’s the star-fishy looking item below the red fiber.
  • A wooden bowl for my supported spindle. Both the spindle and the bowl were from Spunky Eclectic.
  • Three sets of glove needles. Those are hard to find. They are short double-pointed needles. I don’t recall where I got the Addi needles. (Hello, vendors! Be sure to have your name on your receipts or include a business card.) The bamboo set was from Nightingale Fibers.
  • An unnamed Spontaneous Spinning Batt from Loop, in shades of green and yellow.

The Inaugural Fiber Festival of New England

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There’s a new fiber festival on the circuit, and it made a great first impression with me.  It’s a two day festival, November 6 and 7. If you are in the Springfield, MA area, RUN over to the Big E fairgrounds right now.  They are open until 3PM today.  JUST. GO. NOW. You won’t regret it. I”ll tell everyone else all more about it in a minute. You are still here?  GO!

winding a long warp

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I’m warping the loom again. This time it is 24 inches by 8 yards for the Misted Hills coat.

I have to tell you that I made a prototype of the coat from some black linen fabrics that were intended for a different jacket, some ten years ago. It’s amazing what turns up in the bottom shelves of my armoires. It’s really gorgeous, and the pattern is very forgiving in fit. One size fits most. It looked great on willowy Nina, and it also fit sturdier me to perfection.  I’m going to be all secretive and not show you the prototype.  When you see pictures of the real coat, I want the design to be new and exciting for you.

OK.  Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.  There’s still half a length of warp chain on the floor under the loom.

Here you can see a couple of accessories that make it easy for me to wind a smooth and even warp. I use Purrington Angel Wings to hold 2 or 4 tension sticks.  These aren’t lease sticks, because I warp from FRONT to BACK.

The other thing you can just barely see is the roll of corrugated paper that I use in place of packing sticks. It’s coming to an end right now, because it is only 4 yards long.  I’ll switch to brown paper to separate the remaining yards of the warp.

Today’s plans are to wind on the remainder of the warp.

PS. I nearly forgot to tell you that I upgraded the apron cords on my loom. Now, instead of a wonky, 20 year spiderweb of black shoelace, I have perfectly even lengths of texsolv.  Welcome to the 21st. century, eh?

I really love this old loom.

a fiber festival, distilled to pure joy

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This year, my friend Jo and I spent just one day at the NY Sheep and Wool festival. The past two years, I chose to make a long weekend of it, arriving on Friday night and staying through Sunday. This year, concern for my fragile and beloved cat Amber kept me closer to home. aWe still had a long weekend of fun. Friday night, Jo and I dined with Nina and regaled her with stories of past years Sheep and Wool festivals.

Saturday morning, we left at the crack of 8AM, grabbed breakfast to go at Starbucks,  and arrived in Rhinebeck around 10AM. It was a cold, crisp morning, but we were warm in our handwoven finery. I wore the Misted Hills scarf, and Jo wore her gypsy poncho, made from bright squares of alpaca, alternating plain weave and Bronson lace.

I had a short shopping list this year.  Remember all the fiber I bought to spin last year?  Most of it is still unspun. It’s beautiful, but it’s still sitting there. How could I buy more? I don’t believe in having a knitter’s or spinner’s stash. I buy things when I need them.  Last year, I guess I needed too much.

I’m not sure why I put yarn for weaving and dyed locks on this year’s list.  I didn’t have a specific project in mind. I guess I was hoping for that sudden ray of inspiration that comes when I see yarn that catches my interest.  I have conceived and designed many a project in my head while standing in front of a shelf filled with cones of beautiful yarn.

I love the NY Sheep and Wool festival. It is so energizing to be surrounded by creative people. This is one place that we can be who we really are. People dress in their personal styles and wear unique and expressive clothing. It is the perfect antidote to the soulless and colorless muddle of blacks and neutrals that I see the rest of the year..

The festival is a homecoming, a gathering of the tribe. I saw many fiber festival friends–Yukiko, Nancy, Donna, Amy, Dawn, and Kathy. We had lunch (Artichokes French, naturellement,) with two charming ladies from the Utica region. We had our pictures taken by many, many people. We promoted weaving at every possible opportunity.

At one point, I almost bought a rigid heddle loom. It would be nice to have a way to work on a second project when my floor loom is occupied by a long warp. I just couldn’t do it.  All the rigid heddle looms had plastic parts. As Jo said, it was a question of which part would break first. For me, looms have to be solid and well-crafted. Like the trees from which they were made, their lives should be measured in generations, not years.

So, this is what I bought.

  • A Schacht cherry wood shuttle, snub-nosed and small, from Hillcreek Fiber Studio. Paper quills from another vendor in the same building.
  • An ebony wood nostepinne from The Rouge Lucette. I was really looking for a compact, all-wood ball winder, but there weren’t any. There never are.
  • Five Loop baby cakes to spin.  Where’s the fifth?  Already spun.  I know I didn’t need any more fiber, but this was my first chance to see Loop’s beautiful art batts, and besides, they are so adorable and tiny that I will have them all spun within a week or so…
  • Citric Acid, Alum, Logwood and Lac for the dye pot.  Oops, I already had plenty of logwood, and my alum supply isn’t as low as I thought. It was really Spectralite that I needed. I need to organize my dye stuff better.
  • An African market basket from a vendor in Building E.
  • A loom…

Yes, I did buy a loom. This is a double frame loom from Ed Haag of Haag Maple Farm. There are no plastic parts. It’s all cherry wood from his own land. How magical is that?

We left the festival grounds at 6PM, sat in traffic for a very long time, and we were back at my studio by 8:30 for a light supper of bread, cheese and wine. Yum.

Sunday, Nina came over and we shared our stories while we spun, knit and petted my Amber cat. Stephanie phoned us a couple of times from the festival. She had misplaced her map and just knew that we could help her find the various merchants that she wanted to visit. Of course, we knew exactly where they were!

I am pleased

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I AM pleased with the randomness of the colors, the delicious irregularity of the selvages, the uneven shrinkage of the weft, and the overall softness of the fabric.

There could have been more mist. There will be more mist when I weave the coat.

I wore this scarf for most of the day at the NY Sheep and Wool festival.  Some people loved it, others didn’t know quite what to make of it. I would expect no less than that.

Now I have to face the math of estimating the warp for the coat. I think I’ll set up a spreadsheet this time, so that I never have to do it again. Conceptually, it needs to go like this:

I started with this length and width in the reed–>and I got this much fabric after finishing.  So, If I want this much of the same fabric after finishing, I need to start with this length and width in the reed.

Anyone have a spreadsheet that already does this? I don’t want the really diffy one that calls for percentage of take up and shrinkage and picks per inch.  There’s no way that this melange of warp can be expressed in ppi. I just want one that is all about the ratios. You know I will thrown in an extra half-yard of length for good measure. And a couple of inches of extra width. I trust my instinct more than I trust numbers.